MSN Search today announced its intention to launch MSN® Book Search, which will support MSN Search’s efforts to help people find exactly what they’re looking for on the Web, including the content from books, academic materials, periodicals and other print resources. MSN Search intends to launch an initial beta of this offering next year. MSN also intends to join the Open Content Alliance (OCA) and work with the organization to scan and digitize publicly available print materials, as well as work with copyright owners to legally scan protected materials.
“With MSN Book Search, we are excited to be working with libraries worldwide to digitize and index information from the world’s printed materials, taking another step in our efforts to better answer people’s questions with trusted content from the best sources,” said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president of MSN Search at Microsoft Corp. “We believe people will benefit from the ability to not just view a page, but to easily act on that data in contextually relevant ways, both online in the search experience and in the applications they are using.”
News source: MS Presspass
“With MSN Book Search, we are excited to be working with libraries worldwide to digitize and index information from the world’s printed materials, taking another step in our efforts to better answer people’s questions with trusted content from the best sources,” said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president of MSN Search at Microsoft Corp. “We believe people will benefit from the ability to not just view a page, but to easily act on that data in contextually relevant ways, both online in the search experience and in the applications they are using.”
News source: MS Presspass
MSN will first make available books that are in the public domain and is working with the Internet Archive to digitize the material. MSN will then work to extend its offering to other types of offline content. The digitized content will primarily be print material that has not been copyrighted, and Microsoft will clearly respect all copyrights and work with each partner providing the information to work out mutually agreeable protections for copyrights.
MSN Book Search will help address the fact that over 50 percent of people’s online queries go unanswered today on search engines, according to internal Microsoft® research. This effort will enrich people’s search experiences, allowing them to access and interact with previously unavailable digitized data in contextually relevant ways, such as facilitating book club interactions or informal family reading, indexing images, or using graphics, keywords and other features to allow for better and faster retrieval of information.
The volume of information to be made available is tremendous. From offline sources, including radio, television and books, almost 800 megabytes of information is produced per person, per year in the U.S., according to “How Much Information,” a University of California, Berkeley study.
The OCA represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technological, nonprofit and governmental organizations from around the world that are helping to build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.
“The goal of the OCA archive is to digitize and make available globally sourced digital collections, including multimedia content, representing the creative output of humankind,” said Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive. “We are proud that MSN is working with the OCA in the shared vision of creating a better, more relevant search experience for people around the world.”
Microsoft will be collaborating with organizations, educational institutions and libraries throughout the world to build a rich index of information, which it believes will foster the delivery of trusted content from the best sources, not just Web pages. While MSN Book Search will begin with books, Microsoft expects the initiative to branch out to include all types of offline content.
“We are committed to working with various institutions to combine our technology and software innovation to deliver rich, treasured content that is not broadly available today,” Payne said. “By combining our deep software investments in advanced reading technologies, productivity- and community-based applications, such as MSN Messenger, and new capabilities in the Windows® platform will combine to make a powerful book search experience that will help people access new information and interact with it in entirely new ways.”
Funny ... wasn't Google doing the same thing when the lawyers showed up ?
Certainly, Apple does all the magic by telling people what it tends to do, and oh one more thing, Steve Jobs would show a working prototype.. or something "surperior" like it did with the untra wide LCD display.
That's not to say, I still pay close attention to Microsoft's move, and prefers using its software and OS over others. Still, Microsoft only shows excitement on the surface, not based on solid results.
Microsoft usually does alot more internal testing or closed betas before anyone sees it and more often than not you wont see a MS beta (most of googles apps are still in beta stages). So thats why I think. That and the fact google and some others like apple will hold off press releases until the product is ready, where Microsoft will announce things in advance.
I mean google would have been scanning books long in advance.
Anyone else think that if MS really did steal ideas, they'd be sued for it, but the fact that they weren't in most cases kinda proves fanboys just blow hot air?
And in response to #1.1, you must read this to fully understand Google's intent:
Supporters of the Google Print project claim, however, that the scanning of the full text of the books is necessary to create a searchable catalogue of the books located within the five libraries' collections. Google says it has no plans to make full copies of copyrighted works available without their owners' permission.
AND
Google Print, launched last October, will enable people to search the contents of books online and, according to Google, make it easier to track down relevant books. It consists of a publisher programme which encourages book firms to make their titles searchable online, and the Google Print Library Project, a scheme to upload books at a number of major libraries.
SO
Since the users are not getting the full "text," I'd like to know how, exactly, it violates copyrights. If anything, it's free advertising for the book publishers. Especially when, if I search for "C++," in Google Print, one of Addison-Wesley's or Pearson's books shows up in the results -- I'd know to get that book.
I'm no lawyer, but I think one should be asking copyright owners regardless of how much is visible on a single search query. Thats just my belief and holds no legal standing.
Translation:
On the other hand, even though Microsoft was in the search business long before Google even came into existence, I don't consider that Google ripped off Microsoft because I like Google and hate Microsoft.
I mean, worse case scenario, Google's search will fall back to what MSN's search is now, right?
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